


all we stood for, all our dreams

by Blake



Series: Star Wars Punk AU [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Cheating, Hardcore, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, I cannot emphasize how much this story is about internalized homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized homophobia freak-outs, M/M, Neo-Nazis, POV Second Person, Police Brutality, Punk AU, Racism, Star Wars is about fascism so it's not gonna be pretty, Underage Drinking, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vignettes, Violence, Youth Crew, and fascists, background Padmé/Anakin, bruise comparison, potential self-injury triggers, straight edge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: You have held his hair back while he puked up beer into your wastebasket. You have sacrificed pillowcases for him to use as tissues while he wracked with silent sobs after running away from yet another blow-out fight at his parents’ trailer. You have watched him spend twenty minutes carefully applying eyeliner in embarrassing attempts to impress a girl. You have gotten docked for grades on ten-page essays covered in his Dorito-dust fingerprints. You have watched him do a full 180 so fast he should have ended up falling on his ass: from making fun of Straight Edge kids for being a bunch of virgins to screaming along and air-drumming to Y.O.D.A. songs blasting out the cassette player you keep in your dorm.My mind is free to think and see, strong enough to resist temptation.And still, you admire him.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Star Wars Punk AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644880
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	all we stood for, all our dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I do not know how much background information to give here. This story would have fit very well in my repertoire of 10 years ago, when all I did was write about angsty punks. The origin for this story was simply imagining what Obi-Wan would have been doing in the punk universe I created. The simple answer is that he would have been in the [Straight Edge hardcore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge) scene in the 1980s. There is a lot to say about straight edge. I certainly did not say it all here. But I did write about some guys in the scene.
> 
> The events of this story vaguely parallel the events of the prequel movies, so please know that it will not have a happy ending. If this story means anything to you, I'd love to hear about it! Otherwise I will probably try to forget it exists because it is so sad.
> 
> All errors are my own. The title and other lyrics in the fic are taken from Youth of Today, who wrote the most RotS song ever:  
>  _We were brothers, you and me / Loyal to our hardcore scene / Our thought, our aims / Our goals were true / Then something happened to you / You changed /I remember all the things you said /Shit you said ! /I guess it was a just a bunch of fucking lies /Fucking lies! /Stabbed us all in the back /Right in the back ! /Don't you dare look me in the eyes ! /All we stood for, all our dreams /You've forgotten what they mean /I tell you this/ My thoughts are real/ And I'll never change/ The way I feel !_

“Sure you want to do this?” You don’t know where to put your hand, so you set it at the sweat-slick juncture of his neck and shoulder. The tense cords protecting his throat press up against your thumbprint. “You’re sure you’re ready?”

“ _Yeah,_ I’m sure.” The impatience in his voice sounds like recklessness to you. It always does. But impatience precedes good outcomes, and recklessness precedes disasters, and so after two years of observation, you must conclude that he is just impatient. Not reckless. If he were reckless every time you feared he was, your life would be in shambles by now.

Still, you don’t take his word until he looks up at you. His eyes are solid and gray as the sky when the fog layer sits high above. You feel a little twinge in your heart that’s something like victory when he looks into your eyes like it’s important to him that you see him.

You always do.

You flip on the switch of the electric clippers and set the blades to the roots of his mohawk before he has a chance to start laughing. “I should get out my tape recorder and have you say it again, in case you blame me tomorrow when you decide you hate it.” Humor steadies your voice. Care steadies your hand.

His hair is dark with days of sweat and stiff with old glue, but it’s shockingly soft when chunks of it land on your wrist, a light, angelic bird’s nest of last year’s down-feathers. His head tilts with the pressure of your clippers. You move your thumb to the stubbled hook of his jaw to brace him in place.

“I’m surprised those still work,” he shouts over the electric buzz. “Since you’ve been getting _professional_ haircuts for eighty years now.”

You don’t roll your eyes, but only because you need them for focusing on where you have sharp blades pressed to his scalp. You only started growing your hair out a few months ago, because your law school interviews are coming up, and because you’re not nineteen and dependent on hairstyles for self-expression anymore. “I wouldn’t be too sure. You might end up with a few nicks. I’m a little rusty,” you say, grinding down a line of hair slow and steady until it’s perfectly level.

He sags deeper into his chair, either bored already or demonstrating that he knows you’re joking and doesn’t find you that funny.

You drop your knee between his legs on the edge of the wooden chair. It’s for balance, so you can lean forward and reach the crown of his head, where the confusing spiral growth of his hair requires close attention to get an even cut. You only know it makes him hold his breath because the exhale he eventually lets out is such a big and reluctant gust. It sweeps in through the holes in your t-shirt and billows under the fabric. The skin across your stomach tightens in the cool air.

The razor-edged fallen hairs gathering on your wrist start to itch.

~~~

You’re not surprised two days later when he tells you he’s claiming Edge. He has always been the type to make sure he looks the part before trying something new, always so sure that someone’s following him around judging him for not looking punk enough, not looking hardcore enough.

He stands in front of the venue with you, a perfect picture of a Straight Edge kid from eight years ago, when suburban punks started reclaiming sobriety as the path to true liberation from society’s oppression. He looks like _you_ did when you met him: shaved head, white t-shirt, blue jeans, and combat boots. He even blacked out giant Xs on the backs of his hands, probably using up the sharpie you keep in your desk.

You weren’t around eight years ago for the birth and excitement of it all, before it was diluted. He looks like the closest you’ll ever get to it, the purest thing you’ve ever seen.

The breath you take is so cold it hurts your lungs, flutters against your heart.

“I’m proud of you, Anakin,” you say, even though you know it’s a simplification of whatever it is you’re feeling. On most days, you don’t even feel old enough to be proud of anyone. You feel like a poser in your pre-law classes, surrounded by politician’s sons who debate fair housing statutes and then spend their weekends on yachts. You feel like a poser at these hardcore shows that used to feel like home to you, where you inject the self-contained rage and force of the mosh pit like a drug to fuel you through the week.

You admire him.

You have held his hair back while he puked up beer into your wastebasket. You have sacrificed pillowcases for him to use as tissues while he wracked with silent sobs after running away from yet another blow-out fight at his parents’ trailer. You have watched him spend twenty minutes carefully applying eyeliner in embarrassing attempts to impress a girl. You have gotten docked for grades on ten-page essays covered in his Dorito-dust fingerprints. You have watched him do a full 180 so fast he should have ended up falling on his ass: from making fun of Straight Edge kids for being a bunch of virgins to screaming along and air-drumming to Youth of Dead America songs blasting out the cassette player you keep in your dorm. _My mind is free to think and see, strong enough to resist temptation._

And still, you admire him.

“Come on,” he says, impatient, ready to act as though him claiming Edge is ancient history. He grabs your arm, just above the elbow, and there’s something hungry and uncontrolled about the squeeze of his palm as he drags you toward the venue door. “Scum and Villainy are about to start.”

Your heart skips a beat as he pulls you toward the thrumming energy inside. You inject these moments like a drug to fuel you through the week.

~~~

Some shows just feel different, even though it’s always the same bands and the same faces in various configurations. Maybe Y.O.D.A opens for The Order, or maybe The Order has a new EP out so they take the headlining spot. Maybe it’s the only good show all weekend, so the local crowds pour all their energy into it, or maybe only the die-hard Straight Edge kids are out because everyone else is across town at a Senator show.

Or maybe your best friend just claimed Edge and you feel every lyric punch twice as hard when you watch his face lit from above when he presses up against the stage to scream the words right back at the singer. You find him in the crowd a dozen electric times and more, and his grin burns your face and his breath washes over you. You feel alive. You’re soaked in sweat and your skin slides across a hundred limbs and bodies you run into in the darkness of the writhing pit, but you can always tell when it’s Anakin’s body against yours, because your heart stops every time. Your heart recognizes him.

“This is fucking awesome!” he yells in your face. He has stopped you in the middle of a song, holding you still in the crashing waves of chaos with his two big hands on your ribs, on your waist, shifting up and down excitedly. You grab hold of his shoulders when a wall of bodies comes pressing up behind you. The two of you hold each other steady. He stopped you here to breathe his joy all over you.

Your voice is shredded from screaming along with the band, so you don’t even bother to try to reply. The muscle of his shoulders is hard and soft at the same time under your hands.

~~~

After the show, back at your dorm, you compare bruises. He sits on your bed across from you with his jeans rolled up to the knee and his stinking boots mussing your sheets, and you watch his skin darken in rainbow colors until your eyes run dry.

“I think this one was a kick straight to the shin.”

“I don’t even remember this one.”

“I think I must have knocked into that stupid thing ten times.”

“That asshole in the red and black. His windmilling is fucking lethal.” 

Blue blossoms into black. Pink hardens to angry red. His bruises are never as puffy as yours; his shin bones are sharp as swords and his muscles are tight enough to absorb shock—or maybe it’s all accounted for by the few inches in height he has over you. It’s an endlessly fascinating game, comparing scars, speculating on differences in physiological reactions. Your legs look pale and ruined beside his.

You worry he’s going to stare and poke at the spreading, borderless purple blotch under your knee until it grows big enough to show him every blood vessel and secret in your body.

“Oh, I also got kicked in the head by some stage diver.” You feel the fissures in your scraping voice like individual injuries. You pull your hand flat across the side of your head, parting the hairs to expose any potentially visible proof of impact. “Do you see anything?”

He collects his legs under him to lean forward. His hand follows yours across your scalp. He looks at you so hard you feel bruised. His chapped lips shine with spit. You can taste his breath even when he inhales.

There’s a sharp tug as he grabs a fistful of your hair, and it would jostle a sound out of you if your voice weren’t mangled. _Then_ , he says, “Your hair’s getting long, old man.” It happens in that order. This is one of those things you will tell yourself this again and again, later, when you worry that you were the only one who was crazy. He touched your hair, and _then_ made a joke of it.

But in the moment, you hardly hear what he says. Your ears are ringing. His lips are ravines of blood-red in hills of pink covered in a white fog of dry, filmy skin. Three layers. You can imagine the texture of each of them under your tongue.

“Took a punch to the ribs, too, coming out of that circle pit,” you say, because you need to have his hands pushing up under your shirt, his eyes on your skin. You would make up any lie to have it.

His big hands spread in the air over your chest, flexing, testing, electric. Your breaths try to rise up high enough to meet him. Your bones remember how he held onto you in the pit just a few hours ago, how you fit better in his touch than you have fit with any girl you have ever kissed.

You breathe in and watch his hand curl into a fist, and your exhale is punched out of you.

You barely flinch, too distracted to register your own surprise. You do not respond like someone who had been punched in the ribs earlier that night.

“Did not.” He sighs and climbs off the bed. You feel his loss immediately, see it in the distance between his crooked smile and the shining-dark glare of his eyes. He has caught you in a lie. You do not know which lie he thinks he has caught, or whether it’s one that you’re still telling yourself. 

~~~

After that, there’s a girl.

She wears more eye makeup than Siouxsie Sioux and has almost nothing in common with you. One of the things that you don’t have in common is that she seems hardly to notice when Anakin is in the same room as her. She doesn’t seem to light up when he’s near her, and you’ve started to suspect the opposite is true of you.

Anakin spends fewer nights crashing on your floor. Her place is closer to the trade school he goes to every morning. You try not to take it personally.

He touched your hair, and then made a joke of it.

~~~

“You’ve known Ani for a while, right?” she asks you one night. The one thing you have in common is the ability to stand at the back of crowds and converse while untalented bands play on stage.

“Yeah, we met a couple years ago.” She doesn’t ask for details, but you offer them, smiling, the way people gurgle up their most precious memories. It’s pitiful. “Through a mutual friend. We’ve been through a lot together.”

She nods diplomatically, head turned toward the stage. After the next ninety-second song, she asks, “And you think it’s good he’s doing this Straight Edge thing? You think it’s good for him?”

You want to tell her that your judgment has no part in it, that you barely have three years of age on him and he’s a fully grown adult who can make his own decisions. But you also want to know. “You sound like you have something against it.”

She blinks up at you, brown eyes invisibly dark under stripes of red and purple makeup. “I’m sure it’s fine for a bunch of white guys, but special groups that only white men are allowed to participate in tend to turn into something uglier.”

You balk at her heavy implication. You did not come armed for a debate. “Those groups are only happening on the East Coast,” you say. Then, “That’s not what Straight Edge is about, not really. That’s a bastardization of our ideals.”

She crosses her arms. You can’t read her at all. You’ve never been good with girls. “I don’t care about ideals if they’re ideals that Neo-Nazis are comfortable with.” It sounds haughty to your ears. Then, she softens. You dread what she’s about to say. You don’t want Anakin to make her soften, the way he makes you. “I just don’t want him getting mixed up with the wrong crowd.”

You cross your arms. “Well, for better or for worse, neither of us dictates who he spends his time with.”

~~~

You hold him back from chasing after Padme in the pit, from making a fool of himself trying to protect her from flailing limbs and surging crowds. She has clearly been frequenting punk shows and navigating circle pits for longer than Anakin has. With your hand on his chest, you feel the vibration of him saying, “I have to—You have to let me—Have to protect her.”

She is currently climbing a writhing mass of heads and shoulders to get onto the stage and on top of a huge amp. “She seems to be on top of things,” you say, smiling up at where she is shouting the band’s lyrics from atop the amp, preparing to somersault into the air and be caught by the crowd. She looks as confident as someone who has done this a hundred times. You like her a little bit more for this one small moment of making Anakin look foolish.

And still, you admire him.

~~~

He seeks you out to spend time with you and acts like you’re holding him hostage.

“Can you put on a different cassette?” he grumbles. His hair is uneven, since he’s taken to shaving it himself.

You take out the tape—the one you bought at the first show you ever went to together. You don’t put on a different one.

And later that night, at a show, in the dark, mad crush of the pit while the only spotlight shows on the singer’s face, Anakin grabs your forearm. He clutches like you’re keeping him from falling. He holds on like you’re what he wants. Your skin is sweaty so he slides, and his nails dig in for more leverage. With your other hand, you find his wrist in the dark and hold it, steady, reassuring. You’ve got him.

You don’t know what it means, but you’ve got him. You’ll give him whatever he needs.

~~~

The next time you compare bruises, there’s a red spot on his ankle that looks like it might be an open wound in need of cleaning. Tentatively, you reach across your folded legs and touch it, rubbing your thumb across the sharp peak of his ankle, checking for broken skin.

Quietly, almost thoughtfully, he murmurs, “If anyone hurt Padme like that, left a bruise like that, I’d shoot them dead on the spot.”

_But you don’t have a gun_ , you think, focusing on that particular aspect of the non sequitur, instead of the way his intact skin draws tight under your touch or the way you can’t predict anything he says anymore.

~~~

His spring semester ends after yours does, but you wait for him so you can drive up to Nevada together.

He used to think you were cool. Part of you wants him to think that again. You want him to like something about you. You want it to be something measurable. You want it to be something you can think about when you worry that you are the only one who is crazy.

So you call a friend of a friend and reconnect with a guy who has a couch to crash on in Reno, where Anakin’s favorite band is playing two shows in one weekend.

It’s the longest drive you’ve been on together, and it’s been weeks since you felt so good. You put your feet on the dash and feel the wind rush through the open window as he flies down the interstate at speeds that would make you uncomfortable on any other day. But today is different. Today is for you and him. You sing along together to the bad classic rock on the radio. His laughing face looks bright as the sun, even though that’s setting behind you.

You take the long way and stop at Lake Tahoe, because there’s no reason not to. You splash in the cold water as the sky starts to fade to purple. Families all around are staring at the two of you because you look like a couple of troublemaking punks. Never mind that you’re going to law school in four months. Never mind that Anakin is starting work at a respectable mechanic shop next week. Never mind that you’ve never smoked a cigarette, and Anakin hasn’t had a beer since Christmas. Never mind that you’re a perfectly complementary match.

He pushes you into the water and lands on top of you. You swallow a cold mouthful of lake and drag yourself onto the shore, coughing a bit dramatically.

He stands over you, blocking out the pale sliver of a moon. He is an eclipse. He is six feet above your helpless, supine body, and it feels like some strange sort of mirror, like you’ve been here before, or like you will be again. He could do anything to you.

You pat the ground next to you. It’s getting dark. Families are packing up and leaving. You still have an hour to drive, but you know the good bands won’t start until eleven. You pat the ground next to you, in invitation. The cold water is still making you gasp.

You can’t see his expression as he says, “I hate sand,” but you turn over to watch his narrow back shiver as he runs across the beach toward the car.

~~~

He drives too fast to the venue and you gripe about it, and then his mood swings right back into place in time for the headliner.

Every time he presses against you in the surging wall of bodies piled against the stage, you smell lake water.

You shower quickly and quietly after the show, since your host keeps the lights off and whispers his way through the tour. You wonder who he lives with, but you don’t ask. Maybe he lives with a mechanic, or a lawyer, or a wife.

When you collapse onto the couch, you don’t smell like lake water or other people’s sweat. You don’t even smell like your own usual soap. You rub your face against the embroidered pillow, listening to the sounds of Anakin showering, wishing you were tired, but it always takes hours for you to wind down after a show. You can’t wind down without comparing bruises, swapping stories. You don’t know how you’ll be able to compare bruises with the lights out, or swap stories without yelling, so you don’t know how you’ll wind down.

The sound of the shower stops short, replaced by the squeaking of skin on glass and tile. Something about it makes you want to laugh.

He stands over you again, like he did on the beach. You don’t know how he can even tell that you’re here. He whispers something. Your ears are ringing, hearing cells dying out one by one from the volume of the show. You can’t hear him.

“What?”

He sits down heavily on the couch. He sinks deep into the cushion in the space made by the curl of your body when you lie on your side. “I said, who says _you_ get the couch?”

And you don’t mean it. You don’t mean anything. You just shift where you’re lying, curling up around the wedge of his hips, feeling his body heat through your boxers.

He’s on you so fast you think he’s going to shove you onto the floor and take the couch for himself. But then his mouth is on your neck, open and wet and panting, wanting.

It’s quick and messy, and you feel ugly and beautiful at the same time. His hand down your boxers, touching you as greedy as a lodestone on iron. You breathe hard against the shell of his ear because it’s the closest thing to a kiss you can have. You come so fast and blinding-white that it feels like something he wanted to get over with as quickly as possible.

Your mouth waters when you smell him, when he takes his cock out and you swear you can taste it on the air. But he swats your hand away when you reach, so you don’t even try to volunteer your mouth. He sucks the skin beneath your collarbone between his teeth until the pain is all that you’re grinding your teeth against and he comes all across your stomach.

You’re stunned, moved to absolute stillness when he falls asleep next to you, sandwiched between your body and the back of the couch. He doesn’t twitch away from the back of your hand against his spine, or your head between his shoulder blades. You breathe from this spot, instead of hiking up your own shirt to smell the mess he left there.

~~~

You spend most of the next day looking for him, all over the city. You look for him at the show, where the crowd feels sparse and the music sounds tinny. You even drive to the lake again. You don’t see him.

You don’t think about anything, which means you don’t even worry about him very much. You assume he got a bus back. He’s always impatient, but never reckless.

You borrow your host’s phone the next morning to call Padme, just to make sure your suspicions are correct. She says he’s not there, but you hear his laughter in the background.

You drive the whole way back without a single thought in your head.

~~~

After two weeks, all you want is to tell him it’s okay. That there’s nothing wrong with him. You’re so much more ready to tell _him_ that than you are ready to tell yourself.

You move into a summer sublet, where nothing smells like him. After a month, you just want to know that he’s okay. You’ve gotten a little better at telling yourself there’s nothing wrong with you.

And still, you admire him. You miss him like you miss the ache of bruises on your shins at the shows you can’t stomach going to alone. Your bones itch. You wonder if his hair is growing out, or if he’s bought himself some clippers. You wonder if he’s broken Edge. You call his parents, and they grill _you_ for information, as if you’re his keeper.

~~~

The phone rings at two in the morning. There’s nothing but panting breath on the other end of the line, and for a minute, you think, maybe—

“I’m scared,” a woman’s voice whispers. Padme’s voice.

It’s not that you pat yourself on the back, but you’re grateful to find your humanity is intact. You grab your keys and speed over to her place without even thinking of whose voice you had hoped to hear on the line.

You sleep on the floor and give her your bed. It takes an entire morning to get the full story. She’s fine, completely unharmed. Just pregnant. She kept it a secret until two weeks ago. He’d been hanging out with racist skinheads. He’d been coming home with bloody knuckles. She didn’t believe him when he said the scrapes were from working on cars. He went crazy when he found out about the baby. He threatened her roommates for smoking cigarettes around a pregnant woman. He quit his job and said he needed to get a more stable career, to provide for her and the baby. He said some friends of his could get him in, and he just had to earn their trust first, and she’s worried he’s getting mixed up in crime and will end up getting hurt.

You have some cash savings hiding in a copy of Paradise Lost. You give her your car and the cash and tell her to call when she’s somewhere safe so you can get a number to dial when it’s okay to come back.

You promise you’ll deal with Anakin. You promise you’ll get him under control. You might be the person least qualified to do that, but you promise anyways.

~~~

The next time you see him, you feel as if you’re looking at a total stranger. It’s seven in the morning. You’re blind from the platinum-bright sun and a night spent at the police station trying to offer what little legal help you could offer to some friends of friends. They were a Black punk band who had been targeted and harassed at the show they were trying to play but somehow ended up being the ones arrested none too gently by the cops. Your head hurts from you pulling at it all night in distress. Your heart is heavy.

So when you stumble toward your apartment building and see Anakin sitting on your staircase in a police uniform, you feel like falling to the ground in exhaustion.

Instantaneously, you know. You know what he has done. You know what he is, now, and what you were too naïve to see coming, and what he can never take back.

The place in your heart where he once undeniably resided dies in that instant. Carving necrotic tissue from your chest feels more excruciating than you could possibly imagine.

When he looks up with his red-rimmed eyes shining blue in the morning sun, all you can feel is that pain.

“Where’s Padme?” he asks. He doesn’t ask where you were all night. He doesn’t have a single thought about the harm he has inflicted on some innocent kids who were just trying to play music. He doesn’t explain how he managed to take an ideology based in hope and twist it into something hateful.

In all the many times since you have imagined assaulting an officer since you were a starry-eyed punk of fifteen, you never quite imagined it happening like this. Your heart ripping open in your chest. Your voice tattered by sobs. Your jaw aching as you catalog each blow he lands, knowing they’re the last bruises you’ll ever share with him. His hand clutching in your hair as he pleads for you to stop.

~~~

It turns out that law schools don’t love having students who put law enforcement officers in the hospital.

And so, for a long time, you have nothing to do but count your fading bruises and weigh your growing guilt. That’s what you’re left with: your guilt. If you had done something differently. If you had somehow prevented him from running from you. If he had had you to talk to about the baby. If you had stayed friends after Reno. If Reno had never happened. If you had celebrated your sexuality before Reno, instead of hiding it from even yourself. If you had taught him better about structural issues. If you hadn’t introduced him to Straight Edge. If you had never looked at his lips.

If you had never loved him.

You’re laden with guilt, but nature always finds balance.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's the link to the moodboard my wife made me!](https://newleafover.tumblr.com/post/628297906883067904/all-we-stood-for-all-our-dreams-by-blake-an)


End file.
